


Living on Borrowed Time

by Snowflake_Hero



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: A little bit of pity towards Yut-Lung, Ash come back, Eiji Needs a Hug, I do ship em, M/M, Post-Canon, Sing Soo-Ling Needs a Hug, Spoilers, cutting hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 17:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16309253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowflake_Hero/pseuds/Snowflake_Hero
Summary: "Would you help me to cut my hair?" Sing just looks at it. Why this surprises him? It’s a normal thing, a haircut, especially now that it's summer, but if he really wanted to cut it he should go to a salon, nowadays is really cheap... "Please?"





	Living on Borrowed Time

Buddy is drooling over him and the distant sound of a: "Breakfast is ready!". Make him stand up, Buddy is shaking, running like an arrow at the sound of food. Sing doesn’t know where in that dog's brain of his, are stored the analogies for food, because Eiji never calls Buddy to eat. He only goes.

Sing can’t help but smile.

The e-mail that tinkles in his inbox tells him that Akira has just returned home, Sing runs his hand over his eyes; that's good, someone who escapes from their clutches in a short time. The chair creaks and, out of the corner of his eye, he can see it, a slip of gold and green with a sly grin. A ghost.

If he were fifteen, he would stick out his tongue and his middle finger in his way to the kitchen, but he is no longer a child. He doesn’t remember the moment he stopped being one. Or maybe he still is, and just don’t know. Because when Eiji scolds him for being late at home, or for forgetting lunch, and when he gives him a few pats on the head and has to stand on tiptoes to achieve it... It makes him think that he has not yet turned sixteen and that he is putting weird stuff in his mouth.

Sing doesn’t know at what moment he has begun to fear, or rather not to do so; to forget it. Maybe Akira helped in that, as a small catalyst in an electrical circuit. And now, he's afraid that the batteries have run out.

Because Sing has started to feel unable to lie (to himself).

And therefore, also to forget.

 

 

In the kitchen, Eiji has a stupid flowery apron. Michael gave it to him a couple of years ago, Sing managed to convince him that he wouldn’t buy something stupid with ugly painted robots, the broken ones. Only with great patience and willpower had Michael had been accept, perhaps at that moment Sing began to grow old.

Buddy whirls his master's calves like a misshapen cat, a huge cat that sticks its tongue out and drools Sing books, and eats he’s damn homework, it's nothing compared to the cute little creature Eiji once brought into his arms so he will not be left alone at home. He keeps wandering around like that until Eiji points to the plate with dog food already settled near the door.

The eggs are bright, the sun is woven into thick cobwebs, the salt cellar is in place, Eiji approaches with alacrity in movements practiced and then he’s sitting in front, and they’re on a morning like any other to eat their breakfast in comfortable silence.

He is lost beyond the blue that sneaks through the window, when...

“Would you help me to cut my hair?”

The fork hits hard the old-fashioned porcelain.

“Please?”

“I've never have done that before, Eiji” Sing retorts.

“It’s okay”, that’s the answer, and there is a slight brazenness in his tone, “I want you to do it”.

Sing just looks at him. Why it surprises him? It’s normal, a haircut, especially now that it's summer, but if he really wanted to do it he should go to a salon, nowadays is really cheap...

“Please?”

“Uhm... I...”

For the first time in almost four years, if we ignore all the occasions in which Sing has seen Eiji drowsy after having slept next to him, or the time he entered the bathroom without touching and... In summary there were few clothes and kilometers of naked skin, that day he ran to work and didn’t return till late at night; Buddy woke up the whole block because he tried to sneak in without being seen, then… the neighbors called the police.

Eiji was looking at him carefully, measuring every movement and every reaction on his face, if this was a matter of ‘The Lee Company’, he would have put on his best business smile and shut his mouth. But, this was Okumura Eiji, and he... Sing is completely helpless against him.

As a prudent man, Sing Soo-Ling has no choice but to yield.

“I apologize in advance if I manage to cut you an ear”.

"I think you're not going to do that…" Eiji mutters, somewhat uncertainly, "Right?"

Sing looked at the wall clock. "I don’t like to make promises before four”.

 

 

 

They placed themselves in the center of the room, a wooden chair to which it seemed that at any moment a leg would fall and would kill the bastard who will sit on it. Then Sing came with a greased sheet in the corners, then scissors.

He found it rummaging through one of the drawers.

“Ready?” Eiji asks taking off his glasses, putting it on the table in the dining room. He heard a "yes" from Sing somewhere back, and saw Buddy lie on the sofa, then he felt that the band with which he held his hair was removed. There were only black, dark, deep strands curling around his face.

“Go ahead” he said.

“D... Do you like it short?” Sing slurred with unusual care, as he took the first section. Then, the sound of the scissors, and the thud on the floor. Buddy raised curious his head.

"Not as short as yours", Eiji stammered, "but something more manageable would be good".

"I thought you Japanese were all about shaving their heads," Sing says in a moment filled with the scissors' murmur and the sound of silence, in addition to Buddy's usual sigh. “Don’t they sell machines for that nowadays?”

“Sing...” Eiji had known him enough to know that when Sing Soo-Ling, the direct boy he had met as a kid, rambled, it was only because he was deeply mortified, or because he was being... shy?

"Yes, yes, I’ll stop now," he said in a sigh. “Sorry”.

From his chair he could see the dust that covered the house, the silly porcelain dolls that they had bought in winter, those jackets hanging on the back of the sofa, next to the umbrellas left sloppily on the floor. In that exploration, in which he saw the house in which they had lived for seven years. So little luxurious, so little demolished, so... Familiar.

It was like being in a dark point of time, in which the light and the shadow bled together until the moment when there was nothing, only a white noise, dull, pushed in the back of the mind. Waiting for the moment when he could jump and break them both.

At what moment he had wanted something like that again, at what moment Sing had started to be part of that selfish desire.

Eiji was afraid.

"It looks like..." Sing murmured, from above.

In the mirror in front of him, which was not a mirror; it was the dirty screen of their television, a very similar face greeted them, or he would have done it if the corners of his mouth weren’t tilted down.

"Yut-Lung..." Eiji answered, and the reflection moved in unison.

“Exactly!” Sing answered, then bit his tongue and almost cut a finger with the scissors, he put his finger it quickly in his mouth to not bleed in all his work. Because maybe that was Sing first time cutting hair. But Boy! He has a good hand for that!

"No..." Sing apologized, but it was complicated as he kept his finger on his mouth, the deep copper and Eiji's black eyes, with the soft crack of a smile, one only for he... At that moment three things happened, the _first_ one Sing's heart skipped a beat, the _second_ , he completely drowned the feeling; He drown it under a tangle of loyalty and silence... The _third_ , but not least, he tried to forget everything about his last thought.

_I wouldn’t mind if he always looked at me like that._

But no matter how much he denied it, or how strong his desires were, the world did not stop spinning or finger aching.

“Eiji, I'm sorry. That wasn’t my intention, I…”

“You know...” Eiji tried, Oh God he had grown, now he was a renowned photographer. He could recompose himself, just say it. “I cannot understand it, even now, even if it's been so long..." Eiji swallowed thickly. It's as if he couldn’t, or didn’t, “I don’t know, maybe at some point he suffered deeply, but he always seemed so scared. Just, like...”

Sing, holds his breath.  _He, he, he,_ the one who had monopolized and taken and stolen, only _he_.

“Just like Ash... He looked as lonely as Ash”.

“I know…”

He understands his _brother_ Yut-Lung, at what point did he start thinking that way of a snake?? The only thing that he has learned to agree for Yau-Si isn’t sympathy, its pity, then mix it all with tenderness. Because he and Eiji are so different in the way they are similar, Yut-Lung is afraid to be alone and Sing is afraid to leave Eiji alone.

If that makes him a traitor, well, let fate be sealed.

“And now that I see you, I realize that you, too, are alone, and I want to take that burden—”

“The shared sadness halves and shared happiness doubles, that's what Shorter used to say”. Sing interrupts, straightening the back, now in thin layers Sing can see Eiji’s neck in an elegant arch, and thinks that he will choke on his own spit because it looks exactly like that day at the police station.

He coughs against the back of his hand, and Eiji doesn’t understand why Sing face is blushing, or the reason why he doesn’t look at his eyes— “I think his mom told him that or something along that”.

Eiji blinks, innocent, confused, and _so_ unnaturally young.

“The case is” Sing resolves, “We are together in this, Eiji”.

It was as if they were seeing each other again for the first time, not as if the years had rolled over them like sand in a mill, but if it was out the first time, Sing would have fallen in love at first sight...

“Sing...” Eiji blinks “When did you grow up so much?”

“Don’t you see that now? I even take you a head”.

The back is almost ready, and now he's missing Eiji’s bangs.

“And you eat like an army”. Ei-chan adds, sarcastic Eiji, soft Eiji, the kind Eiji that ~~Sing~~ Ash fell in love with.

Somewhere in the room Buddy agrees and gives a bark.

“Have a problem with that?” He mutters angrily, his name doesn’t mean _dragon_ for nothing. No one has escaped from his flying dragon fang, just as none of the corporate beasts mess with the child that sits right at the Lee Family meetings.

"No", Ei-chan replies, moving a little in the chair, there’s a childish malice in his eyes, there are stars in those eyes, and they’re his. They are all his.

“Not at all”.

 

 

Sing thinks that to be the first haircut that has ever made the result is something decent, it is not crooked, and the bottom part is slightly shorter from above, it looks, it looks _good_. Only the front part is left.

He really doesn’t want to ruin all his work.

Unconsciously he falls to his knees in front of Eiji.

Ei-chan's eyes open momentarily, enough to know what he is getting into, enough for them to almost come out of their sockets. Then it is spreading to make room for the man who has been with him. A man who Eiji feels like is seeing again after a long lethargy.

There are big, strong and kind hands. One that passes through the lower part of his chin, and causes him to raise his head precariously. Eiji wants to protest, but Sing looks so focused, he's even sticking his tongue out because of concentration, and he looks so much like that little boy that he left in New York with the mission to deliver a letter seven years ago. That is again, that not stopping feeling, the one which makes his heart ache, burn and splash in a swirl of gold and green.

“Do you really have to stand so close...?” Eiji questions. And those dark eyes, like the water at the bottom of the lake, and the mirror in the middle that is the temptation that Sing’s not allowed to touch, if Sing's mind doesn’t allow it, his body will move on his own. Each dose of loyalty and each layer of oxidized steel is rearranged in plates _and_ trembles.

"It's the first time I've done this", Sing replies, in puffs of menthol-like breath against Eiji's lips, "and if I'm not careful, I'll finish cutting all your bangs, you don’t want to be bald, do you…?"

He's becoming shameless, and something dirty, Sing says to himself when he sees the blush on Eiji's face, but this is killing him, it's as if he took arsenic every morning and after every meal until he becomes immune, no matter what. At some point, the essence no longer will damage him, it’s a matter of the sooner or later effects being noticed. 

It takes seven years, swallowing copious amounts.

 “You do not want to end like me, eh?”

To _almost_ become immune.

"I don’t think..." Eiji whispers in response, it’s slippery, like that thing only can be brought by the storm. The world doesn’t turn, there are no fireworks, there is also the pit of guilt that drips from his chest and pours down until the water reaches their knees. “I wouldn’t care too much...”

If Sing stays a little longer, no.

If he leans forward, just a little bit, he could at last. Kiss Eiji...

 

 

Buddy hits his tail against the wooden floor.

And the borrowed time, _roars_ again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My head-canon is that Sing cut Eiji's hair. And that he is the one who continues cutting it until the end. Buddy is like a switch, but don’t hate the poor dog. I love Sing/Eiji with passion and madness, I hope I can write more things about this ship. I wanted to do this as Sing and Ei-chan were forgetting the roles they were supposed to be fulfilling. Sing's is wanting something he cannot have, and Eiji's being the “widow” who cries for his husband. 
> 
> At the end both are in a limbo from which they can’t move, neither forwards nor backwards.


End file.
